


Alike in Dignity

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Ecstasy in Cosmogone [3]
Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: Duct Tape, Engineering, Guns, Whump, general Neathy weirdness, queer, the sigil for a temporary conjunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 03:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12448773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: Best job on a Neath steamship: gunnery officer. As the Irrepressible Cannoneer is well aware.Chief engineer isn't a bad runner-up, though, and they'd be brilliant at it. As they're going to prove to the Tireless Mechanic, even if it kills 'em.Possibly literally!





	Alike in Dignity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pear_tree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pear_tree/gifts).



> At long last, I've written a fic about the Tireless Mechanic *during* the events of Sunless Sea. Standalone, though I have written it to fit into my series-at-large.
> 
> Inspired by pear_tree's Yuletide letter, in which they requested a continuation of the "Overheard at Zee" dialogues: our story begins immediately after this bit of hilarity: https://sunlesssea.gamepedia.com/Overheard_at_Zee:_Rivalry (If I'd written anything else they requested, I'd have saved this for a Christmas Treat, but the fic just didn't work out that way.) I've also riffed on a few character notes from famacneil's "Whistling Shell," which is a delicious fic and takes the Cannoneer much more seriously. 
> 
> Copyright stuff: “Fallen London is © 2015 and ™ Failbetter Games Limited: www.fallenlondon.com. This is an unofficial fan work.”

“(Dilettante)”

“(Amateur).”

“Why don’t you two like each other?” the Longshanks Gunner asks, once the Tireless Mechanic’s scampered back to his precious engines. “He’s sweet. You’re fun. Can’t you blighters manage better than you do?”

“It hampers things that he thinks anyone who likes guns is de facto a mass murderer,” the Irrepressible Cannoneer explains. 

“Eh,” the Gunner says, shrugging. “But I get on with him well enough. He even complimented my brass polishing yesterday.”

“Well. There’s also the matter of what I think of him…”

There’s a question now. What to make of this mysterious engineer? Probably nothing good.

Although, sometimes that's more fun.

******************

Frostfound, now, the Mechanic had been nice enough when he'd first arrived. They'd been happy to welcome the new recruit, what with the ship's only other engineer a Genial Magician who refuses to discuss his craft (“Trade secrets, you know. Besides, I do it all with mirrors.”) Not the type to indulge in tinkering for its own sake, the Magician. 

And the new Chief E had been so delightful at first! Inside of a day, he'd finally fixed the zee-water distiller for the regular crewmembers’ showers, then built the Comatose Ferret a new and far more exciting wheel (futile, of course; the animal continued to snooze its days away). An engineer’s engineer, for sure and certain. Friendly and outgoing with everybody on board.

Practically bubbling over with enthusiasm, they'd gone to the man’s cabin late that night, arms full of plans and blueprints. Everything detailing a cherished castle in the air. 

“The Memento Mori, I’m calling her. The best gun in the world! Once she’s built, we’ll have a weapon that can destroy anything on the Underzee, and I mean anything. She’ll change the Neath forever.”

The Mechanic had given them a look of untempered disgust. Apart from anything else, it just hadn’t looked right on his normally cheerful, open face. 

“Another epic quest, eh? Resource-heavy, requiring repeated trips across the Underzee, I don’t doubt. This sort of witchcraft generally does, I’ve found.”

“I suppose. I never do worry too much about the details.”

“Uh-huh. Understand, I’m on this ship because this captain has what I need to build my Fulgent Impeller. As far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing more than a competitor for their time and attention. So I don’t think we’re going to get on.”

“But I’m sure we’ll have a lovely time! Swapping engineering secrets, talking shop.”

“And for another thing. I hate guns. They only exist to hurt and maim and kill, and I despise having to watch engineering perverted to anything so useless. Especially when it’s beautiful engineering,” the Mechanic had said, colouring beneath his Neath-pallor. “Got that?”

“Right….”

******************

But they're not called the Irrepressible for nothing. Besides, it’s a challenge!

Starting with the guts of a half-disassembled ratwork clock (whatever project this was meant to be used on has been forgotten long since), the Cannoneer devotes a week’s worth of evening leisure time to the labour. Lots of gears and bells and whistles. Decorative nevercold brass slivers welded on at all angles. Neat hoops of rostygold. 

Once complete, the timepiece is a glorious ticking wonder, in the shape of a wheeled carronade. Its elaborate clockwork can be set to fire at any desired time: an ideal alarm clock for the drowsiest of sleepers, shooting out a miniature cannon ball molded from beeswax in a tiny puff of powder. The instruction manual takes up six pages of their best round hand. 

Wrap it up in fine whisper-silk, put the lot into a recycled cat box, tie it off with a red bombazine ribbon, before leaving it outside the Mechanic’s quarters. On the top, a note: _Perhaps this will change your mind?_

The contraption turns up sitting on their bed that night: ribbon, box and all. The Mechanic’s left a terse note stuck on one of the spikes: _No._

Pointed rebuff, that. 

Though it also starts them wondering how exactly the Mechanic broke in. 

******************

“It’s like this,” they tell the Bandaged Poissonnier the next day, while hammering out a dent in the double-boiler (everyone on board confides in the cook; the Tomb-Colonist’s utter obsession with his craft makes him a safe repository for secrets, since he’s usually not listening anyway). “I built a thieving alarm on my door, to send a warning blast through the speaking tubes if anyone breaks in. Plus, I’ve installed six locks, three of which explode when tampered with. Plus, there’s a bucket of water on top to soak anyone who enters!”

BANG. This hammering job’s great fun. 

“But your room, how do you enter without yourself getting wet?” the Poissonnier inquires. 

“Oh, I just get dunked every time. All the gunpowder I work with, I always need to draw a bath at night anyway. But the point is,” BANG BANG BANG, “Anyone who’s got past all that is either a better engineer than I am, or else they’re some kind of Great Game spy.”

The Poissonnier stirs his pot of zee-monster bouillabaisse. “And which do you think he is?”

“He didn’t have a thing to say about my handicraft,” the Cannoneer says, indulging in a hugely melodramatic sigh. “And I can’t think of any right-minded engineer who wouldn’t have at least taken a peek. Therefore? Definitely a spy.”

“Oh, but this is vital news for me! I shall have to ascertain the seat of his loyalties, whether to his place of birth or otherwise. Only when I know his true tastes may I prepare him a satisfactory dinner.”

“You’re a little single-minded, aren’t you?” BANG BANG BANG CLUNK BASH. BANG. BANG.

“My dear Cannoneer, is that not true of everyone in this wondrous Neath?”

******************

The Captain makes their wishes clear; the Fulgent Impeller will take priority over everything else. On the grounds that it’ll make every other officer’s questing far easier. 

So their dreadnaught abandons the hunt for Demeaux Island, stopping only briefly for a shore leave-less stop at Polythreme before making a bee-line to Hunter’s Keep. And then, apparently, they’ll be bound for the Dawn Machine. And Wisdom. And then back to Frostfound, again… 

The Cannoneer works quite hard on not being horrifically jealous. There’s enough work to keep busy; training the gunnery crew to handle deck and aft and forward with equal ease (unlike certain other people who object to mellifluous engineering discourse). Mentoring the Longshanks Gunner - she’ll be leaving for the Khanate soon, so it’s technically treasonous, but who cares about that? Chewing over what colour of brightly eye-watering lead paint the Memento should be, once she's finally built. Soulless people are good at patience and living in hope. Or they are, at least. 

So. Seems to be succeeding, until the day that the Haunted Doctor drops by to request some assistance. 

“The Captain asked me to help our Mechanic. Now that he’s dreaming again, and suffering such vicious nightmares…”

“Again? Everyone dreams.”

“Correction. Everyone dreams when they sleep. Some choose not to sleep. Some simply can't.”

“He could have mentioned that,” the Cannoneer says. No, they will not feel like a fool over this. There was no reason to guess that a cagy, disdainful mechanic is suffering from an inexplicable condition that nobody’s ever heard of before. 

Well, except that it’s the Neath and that’s, oh, every third person or so…

“Whatever troubles forced him to stay awake were resolved by the Sisters of Hunter’s Keep, or so he says. If this is what he is like now, no wonder he refused to sleep before...but I have no advice for him. If I had any idea how to easily rid one’s self of such horrors, I would not be in the state I am,” the Haunted Doctor says, with a grimace. 

“So he’s a frightened stick-in-the-mud who shouldn’t be at zee, it happens,” the Cannoneer says, a pound of smug with schadenfreude sprinkled on top. “Try laudanum?”

“It was because of the man’s imminent laudanum addiction that the Captain wanted me to intervene. Now I wondered, perhaps some secret-sharing to clear his conscience? It struck me that an engineer could always do with more iron.”

“No, he wouldn’t enjoy that,” the Cannoneer says. “He’s a secret spy, you know. Spies hate giving up secrets. But! I do have a goldfish he could borrow. You can give that to him, just don’t say that it comes from me.”

“Ah. One of those Cheerful Goldfish they sell at the Carnival, to ward off nightmares?”

“Nonono, those are boring. I built it myself! Out of gold. And…more gold, I think? It makes little burbling sounds and swims when you put it in a bowl of engine oil.” 

Without words, the Haunted Doctor conveys the distinct impression that he doesn’t think this will work. 

They never get it back, though, so the Cannoneer assumes that it does. 

******************

“How do you moralise this away?” they ask the Mechanic, as seven crewmembers obediently march away for whatever fate awaits them in Zelo’s Town. “Paying for your precious engine with the lives of other people.”

“Easily. Do you know how many London Revolutionaries would do anything to be here? All it took was one advert in an obscure newspaper for someone who sought passage to the Dawn Machine at any price, and we had to turn away volunteers by the dozen. It’s what they want, so it helps them and it helps us,” the Mechanic says, smiling. “Bet you’re mad now, because you thought you’d caught me out.”

Which is true enough. There’s probably a counterargument about the morality of giving people what they think they want if it isn’t good for them, but for once the Cannoneer decides to just keep quiet. It's not a interesting enough question to hold their attention, anyway.

The Mechanic mutters something else as he turns away, which the Cannoneer just catches the tail end of. “…then again, just wait until Wisdom.”

******************

The Unsettling Sage, not to put too fine a point on it, terrifies everybody. Except maybe the Captain.

He is a vampire for stories, grabbing at any hint of gossip, eating up stray whispers with the unabashed, public abandonment of a craving Seeker. More than once, the Presbyterate Adventuress has to forcibly drag him off from where he’s barricaded some poor zailor in a corner, demanding secrets and autobiography and the life stories of everyone the unfortunate victim’s ever known. 

There is something very wrong with his jaw. The Cannoneer doesn’t object to that, personally - those sorts of accidents aren’t uncommon in the circles they frequent - but it's understandable that the average person might not enjoy those drawn-out vowels and hissing sibilants, the drooling interruptions in his speech.

One day, when the Cannoneer’s returning from the lazarette with a borrowed roll of duck tape (the Mechanic’s own invention - if the man wasn’t so ingenious, his standoffishness wouldn’t be this frustrating!) and hears the Sage’s inane droning, they promptly head to the rescue. Even seeing that it’s the Mechanic who’s trapped can't dispel the spirit of awakened charity. 

At least, not until the Mechanic does something nobody else onboard has managed to do: make the fellow shut up. 

“Oh, come on, Student. You tell me all these stories about the zee and what’s beyond the Eastern horizon, and I don’t care about them anymore. But there’s one story that might make me happy…you remember the _Clipper_ , don’t you? You and I and the rest of our company, questing for your enigmas? Tell me one of those tales, Student. Just one to show you remember, I’ll give you any story you want in exchange. My Surface life, anything you ask, I promise I’ll tell you.”

There is a long pause, then a cough. The Sage begins an elegant explication of the life-cycle of Behemoustaches. 

A door slams. The Mechanic storms in, walking right past where the Cannoneer stands with the stolen tape. He seems not to notice. 

Maybe he doesn’t. Must be hard for him to see through the tears. 

******************

“Please. I know you have a stockpile of laudanum, and the Doctor won’t give me any more.” 

“No good,” the Sigil-Ridden Navigator says, in his halting, pain-wracked voice. “I’ve drunk it all. Every last drop.”

They commiserate in low tones for a few minutes, before the Navigator departs for the bridge. The other zailors give them a wide berth. 

Except the Cannoneer, who steers the Mechanic off for a quiet conversation afterwards. 

“This won’t do. You can’t have a ship this size with a drug-addled engineer running things.”

“It was just a thought,” the Mechanic says, tiredly. “I suppose I’ll go back on my darkdrop draught. Sleeping’s not doing me as much good as I’d hoped.”

“You know what….I don’t think you’re enjoying this engine-building, are you? Do you even want this Fulgent Impeller?”

“No. Yes. I can’t help it. Ever get yourself a Destiny?”

“Sure! Mine’s epic! And self-contradictory. Also I can’t talk about it, or it won’t come true.”

“Count yourself lucky,” the Mechanic says, looking travel-weary and work-weary and all manner of weary. Wearies? Wearynesses? Were-wearyknees? 

The Cannoneer starts giggling at their own inanities. Bad timing. The Mechanic throws them a dirty look.

Oh dear. So much for any secret-sharing this week. 

******************

The Frostfound landing party comes back closer to true death than not. Even their Captain, trained in the school of hard knocks by rogue Flit compatriots, does little more than order a course to the Avid Horizon before retiring to their cabin for a week. The Sigil-Ridden Navigator ends up in the infirmary, where he sleeps uneasily. 

As for the Mechanic, he barely ventures out of the engine room. 

“’s not healthy,” the Gunner says. “D’you know, he’s set up a cot in there?”

“WHAT A DELIGHTFUL IDEA,” the Cannoneer bellows at her. 

She winces. 

“SORRY, AM I- am I being too loud? You know what it’s like after barrage practice. Anyway, I think that’s a fantastic idea! It must be so much warmer than the rest of the ship, why haven’t I ever thought of that?”

Before she can even attempt to dissuade them, he’s off. 

Not that she’d have bothered anyway. Her fellow officer’s as unstoppable as one of their own projectiles. 

******************

The engine room is darkened, with only the Compulsion’s constant violet glow to light the way. Also their high-powered, top-of-the-line Khanate torch, of course. 

“Hi there! Anybody here?”

Silence. The cot’s there, jammed up against a wall, but no one’s in it. 

The Cannoneer goes round the back of the engine’s great bellowing bulk, finds the small hatch bedded deep into its workings. Taps it with unwonted gentleness. 

“I’m not at home to visitors today,” the Tireless Mechanic calls. 

“But I brought snacks! And comfortable cushions!”

The hatch creaks open. “Did the Stu- did the Unsettling Sage mention that? About my weakness for soft comfy cushions?”

“Uh, no. I just thought they might be nice.”

The Mechanic considers. “Almost as good. All right, come in.”

It’s surprisingly roomy inside for what’s supposed to be a maintenance hatch. The Cannoneer comments as much.

“I’ve read _Gentleman Jane’s Fighting Ships_ , you know. Shouldn’t there be a set of cylinders in here somewhere?”

“Oh, I didn’t like that design. So I took them out and reinstalled them as a set of front-mounted cylinders instead. More efficient anyhow.”

“That…amounts to taking an entire 5000-echo engine to pieces and putting it together again back to front. Just for fun?”

The Mechanic treats them to a rare grin. “Yup. Good thing the Magician’s always so wrapped up in his Parabola problems, he’s the only one I thought might notice what I was up to. Well, and you of course.”

“I’m only mad that I didn’t get to help out,” the Cannoneer, passing over a frond-stuffed cushion (softer, also far less expensive than their own scraps-filled one). “So this is where you’ve been hiding away? Seems a little…sterile.”

Really, it is. The engine hum is cosy and warm enough, but there’s nothing in here except a couple of foxfire candles and a crumpled gant-leather jacket that looks like it’s been slept on far too many times. It’s all but falling to pieces. 

Also, tied to an overhead mesh, one clockwork goldfish.

The Mechanic shrugs. “I don’t need anything else, and it’s the Magician who likes bossing crew around. At this point I can just hide in here until we reach Kingeater’s.”

“But I don’t think you’re built to be a loner any more than I am,” the Cannoneer says. “You have this unfortunate habit of caring about people, that’s very unusual in the Neath…look, the Doctor said I ought to ask you if you’d go in for a bout of secret-swapping. But my ritual’s a little involved and requires a cannon. Plus we blew a hole through the stern of my last ship. So shall we just try it one way instead?”

“Mmm. I’m a bit literal. You tell me what your secret is and what you’re hoping to find once you’ve given it to me, and I talk my way through the topic until we’re both sick of it. Also, I’ll need something to carve,” the Mechanic says, whipping out a seriously sharp kifer. 

“I have a half a loaf of algae-bread. And a Boundling sausage. Sorry, I didn’t know this was going to be an artistic masterpiece.“

“The sausage will do,” the Mechanic says. “Fire away, as it were.”

Oh well. Bottoms up.

“I’ve fancied you since the day you came on board, shouting about your spots of rust. You live and breathe engineering! You’re the only other officer who actually likes the zubmarine conversion! Your idea of hiding away from your problems is to literally go hide in an engine! It’s all terribly attractive.“

“Um,” the Mechanic says, popping a piece of sausage into his mouth. “On my part, I think it was around when the Magician told me you’d invented an entire camouflage system to cunningly disguise our ship as something even more illegal. Complete with a prototype toy ship you zailed around a bucket.”

“…he wasn’t supposed to mention that to anyone else,” the Cannoneer says, vexed. 

“He wasn’t? I thought it was sweet,” the Mechanic says. “Reminded me of someone I left back on the Surface, not that I’m ever seeing him again…see, now that’s not really fair to you. And the Neath takes so much away. That was one of the things I really thought I could rely on, hating anyone who loves guns as much as you do.” His voice cracks. “See, it was important to me that I keep hating you, because I knew I would have cared so much about that once.”

“You’re hardly wrong. I do fashion things made to kill people, and I don’t care who’s on the business end. For me, it's all about the aesthetics of the thing.”

“So that’s it, then. You’re you and I’m me, and that’s that,” the Mechanic says, curling up in the corner.

“You’ve reasoned that out beautifully,” the Cannoneer says, softly. “Except.”

“Except what?”

“Except that we’re in the Neath, where reason doesn’t go for much,” the Cannoneer says, and kisses him. 

“I was about to…”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind,” the Mechanic says, throwing his half-finished carving aside. “It’ll wait.”

******************

He sleeps soundly afterwards, for the first time in who knows how long. So quietly it’d be hard to tell he’s even alive, if not for a long lock of hair over his mouth that flutters when he breathes. 

The Cannoneer trims the wicks, and nicks a copy of _Cosmogone Zubmarine_ out of the Mechanic's jacket pocket. These next few weeks or months will be fun, even though it won’t last. Too many irreconcilable differences. After a voyage or two, sweethearts usually weary of their soulless hedonism. 

But the Underzee’s a wide and frightening place; it takes plenty of fun and exuberance and comradeship to defy its lonely ways. Sometimes, a little more than that. 

And in the meantime?

What a lot of wonderfully absurd contraptions they’re going to build!


End file.
